System and method for carrying a wireless based signal over wiring

Abstract

A device, network and method wherein a standard wireless modem is coupled to wiring for carrying a wireless baseband signal that may be OFDM based, and may be directly generated by the wireless IF modem, or extracted from the modem RF signal. The wiring may be a building utility wiring, such as telephone, AC power or CATV wiring. The baseband signal is carried simultaneously with the utility service signal over the utility wiring using Frequency Division Multiplexing. The device may be enclosed with a data unit, a standalone dedicated enclosure, within an outlet or as a plug-in outlet adapter. Data units may couple the device by a wiring port such as standard data connector, or via wireless connection. The device may be locally powered or via a power signal carried over the wiring. This abstract is not intended to limit or construe the scope of the claims.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention relates to the field of wired communication, and, more specifically, to using wireless oriented signals over a wired medium. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] Wired Home Networking. [0003] Most existing offices and some of the newly built buildings facilitate a data network structure based on dedicated wiring. However, implementing such a network in existing buildings typically requires installation of new wiring infrastructure. Such installation of new wiring may be impractical, expensive and problematic. As a result, many technologies (referred to as “no new wires” technologies) have been proposed in order to facilitate a LAN in a building without adding new wiring. Some of these techniques use existing utility wiring installed primarily for other purposes such as telephone, electricity, cable television (CATV), and so forth. Such an approach offers the advantage of being able to install such systems and networks without the add...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0048] In one aspect of the present invention, a device is based on a WLAN data design. However, only the baseband signal is used, so that the baseband to RF portion (hereinafter ‘RF portion’) of the WLAN unit may be obviated. The baseband signal may be coupled to the wiring via isolation, analog switching, driver and receiver, filtering and impedance matching functionalities, allowing for networking over the wiring with one or more similar devices coupled thereto.

Problems solved by technology

However, implementing such a network in existing buildings typically requires installation of new wiring infrastructure.

Such installation of new wiring may be impractical, expensive and problematic.

Since OFDM as well as other spread spectrum technologies are considered to be complex and expensive (requiring Digital Signal Processors—DSP), and since telephone wiring is considered a better communication medium wherein multipath is less considered as a major impairment than it is in wireless networks, OFDM technique (and any other spread spectrum or any multi-carrier modulation), which is considered to be powerful and high performance, has not been suggested as a dominant modulation for wired communication in general and over telephone wiring in particular.

As such, in most cases a single wireless unit (such as an access point) cannot efficiently cover the whole premises.

However, installing a dedicated network wiring infrastructure in existing houses is not practical as explained above.

The type of wiring, noise and the general hostile environment results in a poor and unreliable communication medium, providing low data rates and requiring complex and expensive modems.

As such, this solution is complex, expensive and offers low reliability due to the amount of hardware required.

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